Vancouver’s Dapper Labs to produce digital football collectibles after reaching deal with NFL

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Canadian blockchain company Dapper Labs Inc. will be adding NFL highlights to its roster of digital collectibles after signing a partnership agreement with the National Football League (NFL) and the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA), the company announced Wednesday.

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The collectibles, also known as “Moments,” will allow fans to buy, sell and trade in-game digital moments from the football league throughout the season as well as some of the greatest plays in the NFL history. The launch date has not yet been disclosed, though the company expects to have these NFTs on the market by the end of the current season. Terms of the deal were not revealed.

The NFTs will be sold on the Flow blockchain network, which supports the platform’s native FLOW token, different crypto wallets holding bitcoin and Ether, as well as credit card payments.

Vancouver-based Dapper, which has been valued at more than US$7.5 billion, is a pioneer in the digital collectibles space, part of a wider trend that has seen billions of dollars flow into digital non-fungible tokens, or NFTs.

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Dapper’s NBA Top Shot collectibles grew by 30 times over 2021 with over US$780 million bought and sold. The highest-selling NFT in the collection is the LeBron James 2020 NBA Finals Series 1 Legendary Moment, which sold in late August for US$230,000.

“You’ll see a very similar user experience to NBA Top Shots where we expect it to be credit-card first,” Caty Tedman, the head of partnerships at Dapper Labs, told the Financial Post, of the NFL deal. “Top Shot does about 96 per cent of transactions in credit cards, so we’ve really taken some of the scariness out of participating in crypto.”

We’ve really taken some of the scariness out of participating in crypto

Caty Tedman, head of partnerships, Dapper Labs

Tedman added that there are a few key differences with how the company will approach the NFL NFTs than with Top Shot, saying the content curation will be unique where it does not necessarily focus on the stats, but aims to feature the moments that had fans talking. One challenge Tedman pointed out is to take these big plays popular in the NFL and condense them into short video experiences that can be traded in the NFT space.

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“The NFL has such a broad coverage, especially in the U.S., that I think we’re gonna have an interesting challenge to reach casual fans,” Tedman said. “But, it has a huge potential to be their gateway to crypto.”

Other leagues have also developed their own NFTs, including Major League Baseball, which  has created digital baseball cards in collaboration with collectibles company Topps Company Inc.

“Our players are immensely excited for the NFLPA, in working with our enterprising partners at Dapper Labs and OneTeam, to make this significant push into the digital collectibles market,” said Steve Scebelo, the president of the marketing and licensing arm of the NFLPA, in a release.

Roham Gharegozlou, chief executive officer of Dapper Labs, highlighted a couple of recent memorable plays in addressing the partnership.

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“From the Hail Murray to the Minneapolis Miracle, magic happens in NFL stadiums…. We can’t wait to give the more than 300 million NFL fans the opportunity to own the game that matters to them,” Gharegozlou said in a release.

The partnership with the NFL comes about a week after Dapper signed a similar deal with the premiere Spanish soccer league, LaLiga, to give users the opportunity to buy, trade and collect NFT digital collectibles connected to its teams.

Dapper Labs first came to prominence with blockchain-based Crypto Kitties, virtual pets that could be bred and traded and which became an online craze in 2017.

Financial Post

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